Thoughts on faith, musings on Scripture, sermons from Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
(Note to FCPC members: this blog is meant for a wider audience than just FCPC. The things discussed here usually speak of the larger church and not FCPC in particular.)

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Sunday, July 30, 2017

After
stealing his brother’s birthright, Jacob must flee to escape Esau’s plan to
kill him. He seeks refuge in the far away land of Haran, with the family of his
mother. When Jacob arrives in Haran, he encounters shepherds at a well and asks
them if they know Laban, the unclehe’s
never met. They do, and they inform Jacob that the young woman coming to water
a flock of sheep is Laban’s daughter, Rachel. Jacob is overcome with emotion.
He weeps and embraces Rachel, who runs to tell her father of Jacob’s arrival. There
is a warm, family reunion, and Laban invites Jacob to stay with him.

During
the midst of this family reunion, the story offers an odd note. It says, Jacob
told Laban all these things, with no explanation as to what “these things”
are. Does he tell of stealing Esau’s birthright and fleeing to Haran,? Does he tell
of his dream at Bethel and God’s promise to be with him? The story doesn’t say.
It leaves us to guess or assume.

But
our story tellers surely chuckle as Jacob the trickster is himself tricked.
Laban invokesthe tradition of the older
sister taking priority over the younger, a reversal of what Jacob did to his
older sibling. Perhaps when Jacob told Laban all these things, Laban
took offense at how traditional lines of inheritance had been tossed aside in
the house of Isaac.

Regardless,
the dysfunction we saw in Isaac’s house seems only to get worse as Jacob joins
his uncle’s family. We see a bit of this in our reading today. Jacob now has
two wives, one that he loves and one that he doesn’t. Laban has used his own
daughters as pawns and bargaining chips to make Jacob serve him. If Laban knows
about the dream at Bethel, knows that God is with Jacob, perhaps he thinks he
will benefit from Jacob’s presence. Now Jacob is bound to Laban for another
seven years. And we’re just getting warmed up.

As
the story continues, a bitter rivalry develops between Rachel and Leah. They
vie for Jacob’s attention and to be mothers of his children. God comes to the
aid of both women in times when they are ignored or oppressed. And both women
give their maids to Jacob in order to produce more children. In the end, the
unloved Leah will be mother to eight of Israel’s twelve tribes, with Rachel mother
to four.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

Jacob
is alone and on the run. The con-job that stole Esau’s blessing has backfired.
Now his brother seeks to kill him, and he must flee for his life. He runs
toward Haran, the homeland of his mother. Presumably her family will take him
in.

Jacob
is in grave danger, but he is not the only thing at risk. God’s original
promise to Abraham and Sarah is in jeopardy as well. When God first spoke to
Abraham, saying, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the
land that I will show you,” the country God told him to leave was
Haram. But now Jacob has left the land of promise, returning to the place Abraham
and Sarah had left.

This
danger to the promise was spoken by Abraham a generation earlier. When Abraham
was old and near death, he sent one of his servants to Haran to find Isaac a
wife. But he made that servant swear a solemn oath that he would not let Isaac
accompany him, would not let Isaac journey back to Haran. And so our story
speaks a double sense of threat, of danger, the threat to Jacob’s life as well
as the threat to God’s plans.

Jacob
may be unaware of that second danger. Up to this point, the story has been
silent on Jacob’s knowledge of the promise, or of God for that matter.

And
so Jacob, alone and on the run, stops to rest for the night. He must have been terribly
frightened. Perhaps Esau is in pursuit. And if Jacob knows about God and the
promise, he likely fears that God is angry with him as well.

In
the midst of the threat of his brother and possible divine punishment, sleep
must have been difficult. But harried and worn out by his journey, he takes a
stone for a pillow, and somehow falls asleep.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

“A wandering Aramean was my father.” That famous
line is the opening of a statement the people of Israel were to say when they
offered their first fruits at the Temple. The full statement traces that wandering
Aramean’s journey to Egypt, where living as an aliens, the descendants become
great and numerous, were oppressed by the Egyptians, rescued by God, and finally,
were brought into the good and bountiful land of the promise.

The
statement functions a little like a creed such as the Apostles’ Creed. However,
it is not primarily a statement of beliefs. Rather it is a claim to a
particular and peculiar identity. This is who I am. This is my story. This is
what it means to be this strange community of Israel that is called by God and
exists only within its relationship to God.

Identity
is rooted in story. Families have stories; communities have stories; cultures
have stories. Many would argue that the partisan splintering in our nation
today has been greatly aided by the loss of a shared story, a family story. They
exist, but we’ve forgotten them, lost them, or can’t agree on them, and so, in
a very real sense, we don’t know who we are. Something similar may well be
happening in the Church.

Perhaps
this is the ultimate goal of individualism paired with consumerism, to reduce
each of us to agents of wanting and acquiring with identities built solely on
what we can accomplish and get. But we have a deeper identity, a true identity
as God’s beloved children. It is an identity rooted in stories of faith that
need to become our story. “A wandering Aramean was my father.”

People
often think of Abraham, that consummate man of faith, as this wandering,
Aramean father. He fits the bill, but so does his grandson, Jacob. If anything,
Jacob is the one in whom Israel sees itself. His stories are Israel’s stories.
Israel’s identity is deeply bound to that of Jacob, its wandering ancestor.

Sunday, July 2, 2017

I
had a relative who was missing a good bit of one finger, and there was a family
story about why. I don’t know that the story was true. I suspect not, but it goes
like this. When this person was a child, her sibling or cousin – I don’t
remember which – told her to put her hand down on a bench and he would cut off a
finger with a hatchet. She complied, and he swung the hatchet. She assumed he
wouldn’t actually go through with it; he assumed she would move her hand. Like
I said, I doubt it’s true, but it’s a good story.

That
story came to mind as I was thinking about the story we’re going to hear from
Genesis where God commands Abraham to make a burnt offering of his son, Isaac.
As with my family story, it seems like a story that could go horribly awry with
one false move.

It
is a frightening, even terrifying story. Christians have sometimes played that down
by saying it prefigures Jesus and resurrection, trying to distract our
attention from the horror of a story where God demands that Abraham put his
son’s life in danger.

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to
him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2He said, “Take your son,
your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him
there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” 3So
Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his
young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering,
and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him.

Why
on earth would God do such a thing? Surely this is simply some primitive story
from a time when human sacrifice actually happened. Surely it has nothing to
say to us. And yet this story was probably just a startling and frightening to
the people of Israel. Israel abhorred the human sacrifice practiced by some of
the cultures around them.

And
while the origins of this story may well be primitive, the story as it appears
in Genesis is quite sophisticated. It has a remarkable symmetry to it, a
pattern that seems intended to guide our understanding. Three times Abraham is
addressed and three times he responds with “Here I am.” Abraham is addressed by
God, then by Isaac, and once more by God in the form of an angel. But in only
one of those times does Abraham actually converse.